Introducing Bidstack Sports

Bidstack Sports is led by EA SPORTS veteran and former head of commercial partnerships for Madden NFL, Alex Nunez, who partnered with Pizza Hut to create the world’s first virtual stadium rights deal inside Madden NFL 20.

We’re incredibly proud to celebrate the launch of our new business unit and dedicated technology licensing division, Bidstack Sports. Launching in January 2023, Bidstack Sports has begun revolutionising the traditional sports models for fan engagement, sponsorship revenues, and media valuations by enabling professional sports rights holders the control to commercialise their virtual stadiums in parallel with their real-world assets. The launch of Bidstack Sports represents a step change for the multi-billion-dollar traditional sports industry to scale to uncharted heights, generating diverse, differentiating, and passive licensing revenues for the business and our partners.

Industry Landscape and Opportunity Gap

Each year, sports simulation gaming brings fans closer to the real-world experience – from gameplay animations and athlete likenesses to the environmental and atmospheric detail of the most iconic venues in global sports. However, whilst the visual representations of sports simulation games are blurring the line with real-world experiences, there remains a glaring commercial gap in sponsorship revenues.

Professional sports are a core pillar of global entertainment and culture, generating revenues annually of over $55 Billion, of which approximately 33% are generated from sponsorship deals. Sports franchises have traditionally achieved commercial success by maximising sponsorship inventory and placing brands in front of fan audiences in access points that are perceived to offer high levels of exposure, providing a safe and familiar channel for brands to communicate with highly engaged audiences at scale.

However, until now, this multi-billion-dollar industry model has failed to take advantage of the continued rise in the popularity of digital entertainment. As sports simulations and gaming titles continue to evolve the broader fan experience, individual fans can now access and recreate experiences they could historically only follow. Unlike traditional sports, where fixtures are predefined to a limited schedule, gaming environments are permanently accessible, enabling unprecedented consumption levels and subsequent exposure for branded inventory. Virtual stadiums, however, largely remain unmonetised, with developers opting to deliver generic, often fake, advertising placements into virtual environments in an attempt to enhance the realism of gameplay.

Through our technology, brands, publishers, and rights holders can now circumvent traditional limitations, delivering relevant messaging to highly targeted audiences at scale. Supported by full reporting and analytical solutions, the launch of Bidstack Sports reinforces our commitment to drive the next wave of sports industry growth through further converging real-world and virtual sporting experiences – delivering a next-generation approach to fan engagement.

Partnership Journey: SimWin Sports and NFL PRO ERA

Electronic Arts (EA) defined a new frontier for virtual sports sponsorship in 2019, signing the first-ever virtual stadium rights deals, extending its partnership with Pizza Hut directly into the Madden NFL franchise for the first time. The sponsorship added an all-new element of realism to an iconic sports simulation game title for its global fanbase whilst subsequently unlocking an all-new and sustainable revenue stream for the publisher.

Having been introduced to Bidstack in 2021, I saw the potential for the sports industry to accelerate this trend, utilising game-changing technology to further synchronise commercial and fan-engagement models, enabling real-world and virtual stadiums to operate in parallel. Bidstack Sports represents the full-circle design of that vision, and we’re thrilled to shape these all-new industry tech solutions around our partnership with SimWin Sports and NFL PRO ERA.

SimWin is a first-of-its-kind virtual sports entertainment platform resembling every aspect of a professional sports architecture that will showcase the power, sophistication, and control of Bidstack technology across a diverse metaverse of sports properties and star-studded rights holders. This landmark partnership will see Bidstack’s proprietary solutions underpin SimWin’s stadium sponsorship and marketing ecosystem, enabling franchise owners to manage and monetise virtual environments through advanced audience targeting, native rendering, and data processing capabilities.

We’re delighted to announce our next dedicated Bidstack Sports agreement with StatusPRO, creators of NFL PRO ERA, the first fully licensed NFL and NFLPA virtual reality (VR) simulation game. Through a combination of NFL game data and StatusPRO’s athlete-led technology, NFL PRO ERA redefines the football video gaming experience for fans. 

This partnership represents a significant breakthrough for the professional sports industry and the full vision of Bidstack Sports – for the first time in history, NFL clubs will be able to dynamically control their virtual stadiums in parallel with existing and future real-world commercial partnerships. By making the solution available to all 32 NFL organisations, StatusPRO will further advance its authentic visual recreation of the on-field experience while unlocking the medium as a messaging vehicle for next-gen fan acquisition and ongoing engagement. This approach to direct communication will continue to intensify the relationships between right holders and their passionate fanbases.

By empowering teams to rapidly deliver personalised direct communication with fan audiences, franchises will unlock a new channel for cross-promotion, supporting wider business objectives and expanding their commercial presence for existing and future club partners within their immersive virtual stadiums and facilities.

Our partnerships with SimWin Sports and NFL PRO ERA showcase the immediate impact and standalone potential of Bidstack’s technology to transform every vertical of sports gaming.

The Future of Sports Sponsorship

The launch of Bidstack Sports signifies a strategic evolution of our proprietary technology and an entirely new commercial frontier for the multi-billion-dollar sports sponsorship industry.

The all-new Bidstack Sports technology suite equips sports simulation publishers with a dedicated in-game content management platform that synchronises the commercial control of real-world and virtual sports sponsorship assets within virtual spaces. The tools will continue to enable publishers to monetise otherwise vacant virtual spaces whilst simultaneously protecting and authenticating the gameplay, ensuring that developers can further blend the experience between their art form and the real-world matchday.

Publishers have traditionally struggled to utilise this highly valuable space due to technology constraints, with custom integrations requiring significant planning and resource allocation to deliver and update branded activations. The content has historically been ‘hard coded’, meaning that content is only visible after manually downloaded updates are applied, which are typically scheduled months in advance. Bidstack’s technology circumvents this, enabling rapid deployment to targeted audiences and empowering rights holders and brands to deliver content relevant to different global regions, languages or gameplay styles.

Bidstack Sports has the potential to underpin the next commercial frontier for the entire sports industry – transforming the volume and value of traditional sponsorship assets by extending their reach into currently untapped virtual worlds.